More and more airport and airline employees are reporting that passenger behavior is becoming increasingly aggressive. In the meantime, there are also increasing reports that ground staff in particular are being threatened and are sometimes even subjected to physical violence.

So-called "unruly PAX" has always existed, but the number of aggressive and sometimes even violent passengers has increased drastically. While the subject of masks is mostly on board on Germany flights, some passengers who cannot control themselves seem to "unload" their anger about delays and cancellations directly on the ground staff.

However, it is not only about flight irregularities, but also about issues such as baggage fees or additional payments for hand baggage that is too large. Agents told Aviation.Direct that more and more passengers who have booked fares without included baggage are behaving aggressively at the check-in counter when confronted with additional payments.

The Verdi union sees a problem in this development. Secretary Sven Bergelin, for example, told the newspapers of the Funke media group: “We see that the frustration of the passengers is increasingly being taken out on employees who cannot do anything about the problems. There is a drastic increase in psychological and physical violence." The employee representative assumes that this issue will become even more acute during the summer holidays due to the acute shortage of staff.

In the meantime, many employers have also recognized the problem and have hired security companies to protect their own employees. Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr said at a staff meeting on Tuesday that he was shocked that, for the first time in the company's history, employees had to be protected from aggressive passengers with the help of security staff. The crane is now not an isolated case, because some ground service providers have also hired security companies to protect their employees.

A ground handling agent from Düsseldorf told Aviation.Direct that before delivering the bad news that a long-delayed flight had been canceled, she had asked the federal police to accompany her. The atmosphere among the passengers would have been "heated up" and they would have been repeatedly insulted and threatened. The announcement was then made under the "supervision" of the police officers and the ground staff suspected that the only reason it remained quiet was because uniformed police officers were visible to the passengers near the gate.